


watching you

by oftachancer



Series: here in this moment [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, Family Drama, Fluff, Halward is an asshole., Loch Calenhad monster, M/M, Ostwick accents are Scottish, PWP, Romance, Two drunks are better than one., Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:18:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/pseuds/oftachancer
Summary: Aran Trevelyan - the seventh scion of Ostwick's Bann Trevelyan - had led a sheltered life at the Starkhaven Chantry as a historian and archivist's assistant. Now he's been thrust into multiple wars, has died and risen twice, been possessed by a demon once, and has a piece of the Fade permanently stuck in his palm.Then again, he's also found a gloriously handsome mage to help him sort it all out.Freed from the influence of despair, Skyhold seems to be a bastion of hope and forward momentum again. Aran is feisty, Mother Giselle meddles, and the slow burn from background building to plot finally becomes a conflagration.





	1. Chapter 1

“What’s the matter, Josie?”

“Hm? Nothing.”

Aran rested his pen on the blotter and sat back, crossing his arms. “You’re sighing.”

“Am I?”

“A lot. Loudly.”

She pressed a hand to her cheek, in a vague attempt to keep from frowning. “It’s only… I’ve been reading Varric’s reports about everything happened in Redcliffe. It’s… all of this- could well have ended there.”

“Only it didn’t.”

“We didn’t see it coming. I thought- we all thought - that it might be dangerous, certainly, but not… this… You were taken to another time! A terribly frightening time.”

“And now that time won’t come.” Aran rested his hand on hers companionably. “It’s alright, Josie. This really worries you more than Corypheus? The archdemon? Haven?”

“No. No- certainly- only… I was dead. Cullen was dead. Leliana was being tortured by those-“

“I feel like maybe Varric’s not the one who should be writing these reports. Too much flair for the dramatic.”

“I only write what I see and what you tell me,” Varric said, bringing in another stack of scrolls. “You want me to stop? My editor would be thrilled to have me back on the detective series.”

The Tevinter mage smiled lightly behind him, “And I could get back to researching temporal and necrotic metaphysics instead of correcting this dwarf’s complete lack of comprehension of how time works.”

Aran’s head tilted just slightly, just enough to see the soft halla leather boots peeking out beneath the rush of silver, violet, and sapphire robes, threads of white appearing here and there to give light and texture to the sunset colors. Dorian’s bare shoulder, a caramel swath of smooth skin like the sun casting its last rays before evening. The man was walking poetry. When his gaze finally arrived at Dorian’s face, he saw the quirk of lips beneath that finely cultivated mustache.

The mage lifted a brow, his smile widening. “Am I… off duty, so to speak?”

“Yes, thanks.” Was his voice too rough? Aran cleared his throat, “We have a lot to go through here. I think you and Varric deserve some time to rest.”

“Excellent. I hear the dulcet tones of Ferelden swill calling from that shack you call a tavern. I’ll be there if you need me,” he intoned and swept from the room in a flurry of cloth and power.

“I think the Inquisitor’s drooling,” Varric winked at Josephine, walking over to dump the scrolls into a basket beside her desk. “Is he allowed to do that?”

“One finds it difficult to blame him.” Josephine‘s eyes danced delightedly, “He does cut a fine figure. An excellent sense of color, to be sure.”

“You haven’t seen him cast,” Aran shook his head. “He’s all swings and twists-“ He realized they were both grinning at him, “What?”

“Someone has a crush.”

“Children have crushes.” Aran scrubbed his hands through his uneven mess of warm blonde hair. “I have… the adult, more mature, very manly… version of a crush. There a word for that, Varric?”

“Lust?”

Josephine giggled despite herself.

“He smells good, too,” he added, much to her delight, smirking at Varric.

“Does he?” she asked.

“Coriander and honey and-“

“Oh!”

“See? Josie understands.”

“Ugh,” Varric rolled his eyes.

Aran winked at her, “Tomorrow, you should walk with me at noon around the courtyard. That’s when he practices with his staff.”

Varric coughed dramatically.

“Hard to get your head out of the gutter when you’re so close to the ground?” Aran asked archly.

Josephine beamed, “I will clear my schedule. It is always important to better understand the workings of your inner circle, my lord.”

Varric laughed, “Sure, Ruffles, you keep telling yourself that.”

“Just need to make sure no one sends him running for the hills,” Aran muttered. “Between Vivienne and Cassandra, I feel like he’s not getting a very warm reception.”

Varric laughed, “You spend all that time looking deeply into his," he cleared his throat, "eyes, and you still think the guy’s blind?”

“That’s different. He needs to know he’s wanted. Stop it. Appreciated. Varric, stop taking notes. He’s a gifted mage, he’s a good influence on the mages we’ve recruited, and he’s a bloody dervish in the field. Objectively,” he added with a dark look at the dwarf.

“Yeah, yeah.” Varric shrugged when Aran continued looking at him, “Hey, you’re right. He’s good. We’re lucky to have him. Never thought I’d say that about a Tevinter magister, but-“

“Altus. He’s an Altus. Gets touchy about the class thing.”

“ _Now_ can I make a note?” Varric asked.

“Yes,” Aran laughed, “Now you can make a note.” He stretched his arms over his head, “How many more of these letters do we have to write?”

“Only thirty-seven.”

“Little wonder the Dalish hate us all, with the number of things we kill in the name of pointless correspondence. Did I say pointless? Shame on me,” he chided himself before Josephine could. Her further complaints were disrupted by the woman who stepped into the office.

“Herald of Andraste,” Mother Giselle bowed her head, sinking into a curtsy.

“Your Reverence,” Aran stood, inclining his head to her.

“If you have a moment to spare, your Worship?”

“Yes, of course,” Aran cast a glance at Josephine, who nodded quickly. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you actually. Lady Montilyet, Serah Tethras, if you can spare me?”

Josephine smiled, easily slipping into her role as ambassador. “Of course, Inquisitor.”

“Do what you gotta do,” Varric patted him in the shoulder.

“Shall we walk in the garden, Mother?”

“Another time, perhaps.” He followed behind her out into the main hall of the keep, guiding him to a shadowed alcove beneath some scaffolding. “I have some news,” she told him once they reached the relative privacy. “I’ve received a letter, from Halward Pavus. Dorian’s father.”

“His father?” Aran accepted the letter absently, intently focused on her expression. She seemed… tight. As though she knew he wasn’t going to like what came next. Which probably meant he wouldn’t. She’d had a sixth sense for the way he reacted since they’d first met.

“His family is concerned,” she was saying, “as he is their only son and heir. They wish for him to return home to Tevinter before some event here in the south deprives them of the continuation of their line and legacy.”

“So… why are you telling me this?”

“Lord Pavus has refused all contact with his family-”

“So they write to _you_?” He scanned the parchment, “No one actually likes surprise parties, especially when it’s from someone they’re not speaking to.”

“If you could just convince him to go so that he could speak with his family’s retainer...”

“Convince him? Me? Why don’t you?”

“He will listen to you.”

Aran frowned. “Your Reverence…” He tucked his tongue between his teeth, thinking. “Thank you for bringing this to me. That’s- we’ll speak later.”

“Inquisitor, I would not ask if it were not important.”

“I gather that,” he answered. “Please excuse me.”

He walked from the hall, welcoming the chill air on his face as he tapped the parchment against his palm. It didn’t make sense. Why contact Mother Giselle instead of Josephine? Why try to trick the man? He found Dorian perched on a stool at the tavern, suspiciously eyeing a glass of red wine.

“You say it’s Ghislain, but it smells like something camped in it.”

Cabot shook his head. “It said so on the barrel.”

“Barrel? Barrel?! My dear sir, wine comes in a bottle. Barrels are for beer.”

“This wine came in a barrel.”

“The horror.”

“Dorian.” Aran lifted his chin, “Bring your swill, come with me.”

“Ah, my tasks are never ending. Dearest Cabot, don’t forget me.”

The dwarf snorted, “As if you’d be far from that stool long enough for that to happen.”

“I knew you’d come,” he murmured as he passed Aran in the tavern’s doorway, the tone of his voice so decadently welcoming that Aran had to disguise the shudder it gave him. “I’m clever that way.”

“You are. Which is why I don’t understand this.” He held the letter out to Dorian, “Mother Giselle has asked me to drag you to the Vandral Hills.”

“Perhaps she plans to shoot me. She’s none too happy about the time you've been spending in my company. Precious Chantry boy that you are. Perhaps it’s one of those ‘cross-bow weddings’ I’ve heard they do in the south? I don’t even know where the Vandral Hills are. What is this?”

“It’s a letter from your father, apparently.”

“From my father.” Dorian’s countenance shifted, all his light and glimmer dampening. He took the rich parchment with its broken red wax seal as though it might actually bite him. Or poison him. Or turn into a demon. Considering it was from Tevinter, all were equally likely. “I see.”

“It seems he’s sent someone to speak with you?”

Dorian walked a few paces away, reading, his expression darkening as he did so. “‘I know my son’,” he sneered. “What my father knows about me would barely fill a thimble.” He crushed the paper in his hands, smoke filtering out of his grasp. “This is so typical.”

Aran watched him patiently, “Do you want to go and see this retainer then? Maybe you can find out what your family wants? Why your father wrote to the Mother?” He watched the smoke increase in Dorian’s fist. Firmly, he touched two fingers to Dorian’s forearm. “Let it go.”

The scorched paper fell to the ground and Dorian ground it out in the snow. “I apologize.”

“No need. There’s obviously some bad blood between you and your family.”

Dorian laughed, short and sharp. "Interesting turn of phrase," he murmured cryptically, "And you are correct. They do not care for my choices, nor I for theirs.” He peered at Aran, “You’re taking this remarkably well. Then again, you do seem to be remarkably patient with mages making bad decisions.”

“You’re here; I don’t think that’s a bad decision.”

Dorian glanced at the trampled, scorched paper, still smoking in the snow.

“Oh, that. My sister’s a mage. Things happen. No worries.” Aran tilted his head, “What do you want to do?”

Dorian hesitated, “I suppose there would be no harm in hearing what this man of my father's has to say. Assuming, of course, this ‘retainer' is not just some henchman hired to knock me on the head and drag me back to Tevinter.”

"Would your father actually do that?" Aran tried to imagine a situation where anyone would survive trying to drag Dorian anywhere he didn’t want to be. Blood, fire, walking corpses… it didn’t seem like a smart decision to make.

"Well, no, perhaps not," Dorian hummed quietly, "though I certainly wouldn't put anything past him. Most likely it's just some lackey who I'll send back to my father to deliver the message that he can stick his alarm in his ‘wit's end'."

Aran nodded, “We don’t need to post extra guards in case of a Tevinter assault?”

“You may, at that, but not from my family, I don’t think.” He frowned, “I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.”

“You? In error?” Aran put on his best ‘shocked’ expression, but it didn’t pull the smile he was looking for.

Dorian simply said, “yes,” still troubled.

Not a joking matter then. What on earth had happened? "Why do you think he's trying to contact you now? Is this about what you mentioned before? That you didn't want to get married?"

"It could be," Dorian hesitated. "Let's just see what this man has to say. I wonder how much my father paid him to wait around just in case I showed.” A smile flickered in the midst of those worried hazel eyes and Aran grasped at it.

“Maybe we should keep him waiting, then? Go on a marching tour of Orlais? Try all the wine flights in Val Royeaux?”

Dorian snickered a bit at that but shook his head. “I think it would be better if it was done.” He laughed, somewhat nervously. “I don’t suppose… Would you come?” He asked, eyeing the smoldering paper again. “Just in case it is a kidnapping?”

“Of course,” Aran agreed. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

“Now, then.”

“I’ll tell Josephine and meet you at the stables.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

For the most part, they rode in silence.

From the mountains, Ferelden looked oddly peaceful. They could see Lake Calenhad below, Kinloch Tower standing proudly in its glistening waves. So much death and destruction surrounding that one body of water, and yet it looked positively serene. Inviting, dark green depths. Sun-soaked, mossy shores. Closer, he knew the visually appealing crags of ancient forts would seem more desperate, screaming tales of the Blight as surely as the wrecked men and women who had survived it.

How dare he? Dorian wanted to scream. The very idea that Halward had tracked him down, across Nevarra and the Waking Sea, into the bloody Frostback mountains sent chills down his spine that had nothing to do with the blighted snow that caked the pass. That he’d had the audacity to reach his grisly fingers into Dorian’s life once more, after everything… ‘As though he owns me.’ He gritted his teeth, surprised when a heavy spread of fur landed on his hands. He looked at it: thick bearskin lined with succulent ram’s wool.

“You looked cold.”

Bless the idiot. “Thank you,” Dorian said finally, pulling the cloak around his shoulders. It was warm. Warmer still, as it smelled distinctly of the man who’d given it to him. Blade oil, melted glass, the sharp tang of ozone, the earthy whisper of pine and fallow fields.

“Sure.”

The reflection of the sun from the snow to his hair gave it a golden quality, a warm halo. An utter mess. He wondered if Aran had ever tried combing his hair with anything other than his fingers. Was that… dirt on his brow? How was it so damned appealing? “Not going to ask me for what?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes. No.”

“Okay.” As they crested the next rise overlooking the valley and the lake and the fields and hills beyond, Aran grinned fiercely, breathing the cold in deep, face up to the sun. “You know, at home, we have stories about lakes like this - huge, deep ones, full of ancient beasts. Every time I see Calenhad, I want to dive in.”

“Are you mad? It’s freezing cold.”

“No colder than the Waking Sea and I grew up swimming in that. Never as fast as my brothers, but I was better at holding my breath.” He glanced sideways, meeting Dorian’s eyes with a crooked smile, “Always could go for deeper dives.”

Dorian shivered, despite the warmth of the bearskin and wool. There was such a bloody wholesomeness to him, even when he was displaying with great skill exactly how unwholesome he really was. His fingers alone should have been enough to gently draw him from the Andrastian pedestal he’d been placed on. And Maker, the way those sweetly curving lips had wrapped around him only the night before, eager joy in every press of them against his skin. He could have him right now, he knew. Just throw himself off the mare’s back and fall into the tall grasses, and Aran would follow. It was strange, how much it scared him, that knowledge. ‘I do, though,’ he’d said. They hadn’t spoken of it since. Four days. He’d told the man not to go making declarations. Four days of stolen moments, minutes, hours. And through every rushed, hungry exchange those three words echoed in Dorian’s mind. ‘I do, though.’ You do _what_? He wanted to ask; he almost had - a dozen times - in the midst of murmuring Aran’s name like a heretic’s prayer against the Inquisitor’s shoulder, a chaise cushion, a table, and various walls. And then what? What if Aran didn’t remember what he’d been talking about, post-exorcism and lyrium-flooded as he’d been? Worse, what if he _did_ remember? What if Dorian was building the whole thing into something greater than it had been meant to be?

“Dorian-“

Dorian cleared his throat, turning resolutely back to the tall dark tower that rose from the lake’s depths. “Your sister’s a mage, you said?”

“One of them, yes. Miranda.” Dorian didn’t look but he could hear the slight sigh in the answer. Gentle disappointment. Better than some alternatives.

“I wondered why you did what you did in Redcliffe. After what we saw.” He frowned, thinking, something, anything, “Is she in a Circle, then?”

Aran shook his head, “I don’t know where she is now. Not since Kirkwall. She was in the Ostwick Circle, though, before. She seemed to like it. I’m not sure. I never thought to question it before. That’s not good, I realize,” he added quickly.

“Why should you have? You accepted what you were told.”

“Not exactly. I questioned a lot, actually, I just didn’t think about the Circles. Between Miranda and Patrick… I don’t know, it always just seemed inevitable.” He paused, “Patrick’s my brother. He’s a Templar. Well. He was. I’m actually not sure where or what he is now. He was in Kirkwall when everything… Varric didn’t recognize his name or description, not that that means anything.”

More than he’d ever thought to ask. Personal, intimate details of this man’s life. Who else, besides Varric, had thought to look beyond the surface? Why hadn’t he, until now? Because it was pointless, of course. Because it was easier to keep distance not knowing these hundred little pieces of what made Aran who he was. “A Mage, a Templar, and a Chantry scholar,” he murmured, dryly. “Was your family trying to achieve some kind of award?”

“And my sister Leonora is a Sister, vows and all.”

Now Dorian dared a glance. “No. Really.”

“The look on your face. Yes, it’s true,” Aran laughed. “It’s traditional in Ostwick to pass your extras to the Chantry in some form or another. Can you imagine if they’d had all of us running around underfoot?”

“Three in the Chantry, one in the circle. Little wonder you didn’t wonder.” Dorian watched the play on words have the desired effect on the Inquisitor - lips twitching, blue eyes narrowing with a gleam. “And now?”

“Now…” Aran shrugged, “I’m not a mage. It shouldn’t be up to me.” Was that consternation in the brow line? Frustration? Trevelyan didn't enjoy being the last word in a debate, that much was true. One of the first, certainly, but never the final say. It was one of his more endearing traits as a leader.

“But since it is…?”

“What do you think?”

“What do I think or what do I think you think?” Dorian teased.

Aran snorted. “You. Dorian.”

“I’m not certain I have any greater notion than you. In Tevinter, mages have too little concern with control and too much concern with amassing power. In the south, you all treat your mages as though they were diseased cats. A happy medium might be nice.”

Aran nodded, “I agree. But how to do that with balance… It’s a puzzle.”

“It is.”

“That’s alright.” He tilted his head back, basking in the sun again like a freckled, self-satisfied dragon. “I like puzzles.”

“So you do,” Dorian chuckled. “For that, we are all in luck.”

Did they know? he wondered. If Mother Giselle was writing to Dorian’s father, was she writing to Aran’s as well? Whispering her suspicions of what they got up to when they disappeared from view? Which, to be fair, since he’d drawn Aran out of the clutches of possession had been frequently untoward and hardly what anyone but the most charitable would call romantic. He was being hunted, that was it, even now through looks and dripping euphemisms. Aran was hunting Dorian like a mabari with a scent. ‘I do, though.’ Perhaps he'd meant: ‘I do want to take you against every conceivable surface’. That certainly seemed to be the case, after all, and it was lovely, being drawn into cupboards and storage rooms, answering the awfully official summons to Aran’s rooms to assist with ‘metaphysical dilemmas’ that turned out to be purely physical and easily resolved. The man could only have been less subtle if he’d simply run through the hold with Dorian’s name scrawled across his bare ass. What would his Chantry siblings and peers think? His deeply Andrastian parents? To know he was so flagrantly, pleasantly, wonderfully free with his affections, to another man? He flexed his hands on his reins. ‘I do, though.’ Could it be that? Affection? Some greater kin to affection that, even in his own mind, Dorian dared not give voice to?

“Just ask.”

Dorian tucked in tongue in his cheek. “You don’t talk about your family much.”

“Neither do you.”

“Fair point,” he looked at the backs of his mare’s speckled ears. “You get along with them?”

“I haven’t really had word from them since the Conclave.”

“Oh,” Dorian’s brows darted up. Your son becomes a prophet, drawing pilgrims and acolytes from every corner of the world, literally saving it from itself, and you don’t even write a letter?

“Well, I did, sort of,” Aran shook his head like a cobra emerging from a basket. “After Haven, Josephine received a formal request from the seneschal that we send an envoy to the hold and Ostwick. I wrote them and declined. Our resources were stretched too thin to warrant random excursions.”

And just what was this, Dorian wondered, if not a random excursion? Less of a trip than one to the Free Marches, but still…

“And I wasn’t… entirely myself at that time.”

“Ah - yes, that time.” Dorian frowned. He had traced some of the things Aran had done during his time under the influence of that despair demon - scars that were too close and too deep for safety or peace of mind. What else had it wanted, besides his pain and isolation and probable death?

“Anyway,” Aran cleared his throat, drawing Dorian out of his thoughts. “We haven’t heard from them since then.” He smiled, a little tightly, “My cousins, on the other hand, have lost no time using my newfound fame and glory to their own ends. So that’s nice.” He tugged at his ear, a tell, Dorian had learned over months of studying the fellow. Insecurity. “It’s not- I’m making them sound awful, aren’t I? It’s fine. I had a good childhood. A good home. They’re good people. Good Andrastians. My father’s a good leader, well loved-”

“You’re saying ‘good’ a lot,” Dorian pointed out, wondering if perhaps all was not as sunny as Josephine had led them all to believe. Did she know otherwise and simply kept to the propaganda? Or had he kept this uncertainty from her?

Aran rubbed a hand over his face, through his hair. He touched things when he was thinking, as though contact with anything would help him secure an answer. “They care for my well being. I’m fairly certain. Or - rather - I believe they do as I do them, but we’re not close. I mean, I haven’t actually spoken with my parents since I was ten. I went to the Chantry archives in Ostwick first and, I don’t know, maybe if I’d stayed there I might have seen them more. But then Master Archivist Welkin took a shine to my penmanship and I was off to Starkhaven and…” he shrugged. “I don’t know. I wrote with my mother for a while, but between my apprenticeship and- it all just drifted apart. I had my life and they had theirs. I didn’t see any likelihood the two would intersect again in any meaningful way. I received regular letters from Miranda - I think we all did - but so far as I could tell she never actually received any of mine. I saw Patrick once or twice, but we... never really got on.” There was a story there in the darkness that crossed behind those cool blue eyes, Dorian would have bet on it. “And Max sent reports on the keep, which… ugh, yawn.”

Dorian smoothed his moustache. “No need of alliances?”

“Through marriage, you mean?” Aran smiled as though the very idea were ludicrous. “You’d first need to find a family who wanted my family’s name without any of the actual associated power. I was never going to inherit. That much was clear to everyone. In fact, I bet if any family had proposed something to my father, it likely would have been more suspicious than anything. He and Max might well have hauled them into the dungeons; ‘Who are ye and how many of our family do you plan to kill?’” He scowled mockingly ahead, his brogue deepening and broadening in the impression of father or brother, perhaps some combination thereof. “Maybe, if they’d needed funds, something might have been arranged with a prosperous merchant family, but Trevelyan has enough connections, to be honest, and they’re well funded, between the various coastal trades. And anyway, I’m not- I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m sort of…”

Dorian’s brows lifted. “What?” Aran muttered something under his breath. “Hm?”

“Bit not good for a lash,” he repeated, studying his hands.

Dorian blinked. “Pardon?”

Aran shook his head. Smile tight. “Should we camp or ride through? We might make Redcliffe by nightfall at this pace.”

“I'd prefer to ride through. Best to get it over with.” Dorian studied him thoughtfully. “What did you mean?”

“What do you think I meant?”

“My fluency in the Trade Tongue is marvelous, I know, but there are still some bits of your barbarian slang I haven’t picked up as yet.” The fellow's ears were turning red. “No one should beat you?”

“ _Moribus quam forma_ [1].”

Dorian had never heard his mother tongue spoken with a roughened brogue, but he decided it was an improvement. The turn of dialect, not the words themselves. Sweet Andraste, Dorian thought, watching the embarrassment seep across the other man’s features like spilled wine. Truly? He couldn’t actually think he was unattractive. Could he? “Well. I’m offended.”

Aran rolled his eyes. “Don’t be, no one ever meant anything by it-“

“Not for you. Maker’s breath! For me. As though anyone would question my taste.”

The laugh that boomed out of the rogue was as sweet as the finest White Shear, sparkling and light. The look that Aran pierced him with sucked the breath from him - heat and pleasure and promises of more to come of both. “If someone tries to ambush us and steal you from me, Dorian, I will stab them many, many times and damn the consequences.”

He laughed, trying to disguise the sudden pounding of his heart. ‘I do, though.’ “You have such a delightful way with words.”

“What about you?”

“Why, yes,” Dorian smirked, “I do have a delightful way with words, as well. How kind of you to notice.”

“Your family.”

Dorian eyed the rooftops of Redcliffe. “A topic best left for another time, I think, yes? Quite enough sharing for one day. We are gallant menfolk after all. Shall we race? Ten silver and a bottle of Orlesian brandy to whoever makes the city gates first.” He spurred his mare ahead, his cloak snapping behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] “Manners over form”. That is to say: pleasing to the mind, not the eye.


	3. Chapter 3

They reached Redcliffe with the moon high in the sky above, blistered by the shards of Fade pouring through the sky. The Gull and Lantern was darkened, though people milled about the streets and there was the sound of laughter and merriment from the docks.

“This doesn’t bode well,” Dorian muttered, hitching his reins to the post outside.

“Should have brought Varric-“ Aran frowned.

That idea was almost worse than the prospect of being murdered in a tavern. “As if I need my personal life splayed wantonly in one of his penny dreadfuls.”

“We’ll just be careful, then. Not the first time we’ve been alone together in danger.”

“True. We did rather well last time.”

Aran rested his palms on his hilts. “Right. Ready?”

Dorian nodded and they slipped quietly in through the unlocked door. The tavern was silent, dark, and empty. “No one’s here.” Aran shook his head, pointing up, a moment before Dorian heard the footsteps coming down the stairs opposite. His grip on his staff loosened as he relaxed, preparing to cast, until he saw the man’s face. Familiar and foreign.

Here?

“Dorian.” High, polished, classic Tevinter cadence dripped in that one word. He wondered sometimes if he’d been given the name simply because of how well Halward could say it with inherent despair.

“Father,” Dorian spat the word as a title. “So the whole story about the 'family retainer' was just- what? A smoke screen?”

“Then you were told.” Those stern hazel eyes flicked to Aran, away, then back again, calculating. “And you’ve brought the Herald of Andraste.”

“Aran Trevelyan,” Aran introduced himself quietly. So bloody polite. ‘Stab him’, Dorian suddenly wanted to beg. Demand. ‘Stab him with one of your pointy knives!’ “You’re a long way from home, Magister Pavus.”

"I apologize for the deception, Inquisitor. I never intended for you to be involved.”

“Of course not,” Dorian snapped. “Magister Pavus couldn't come to Skyhold and be seen with the dread Inquisitor. What would people think?" Fury clipped his language into sharp staccato, sarcasm made him sneer. “Tell me, Father - what is this, exactly? Ambush? Kidnapping? Warm family reunion?” The last ludicrous suggestion dripped from his tongue like acid.

Halward spread his hands in apology, looking from his son to Aran. “This is how it has always been,” he began.

If only, he wished. If only he had always felt this complete illness at the very sight of the man. It wouldn’t have hurt so damned much.

“You went through all the trouble of getting Dorian to meet you here,” Aran said from his place behind Dorian’s shoulder. No one had ever called the Inquisitor a fool. “You might as well tell him whatever was so important.”

“Yes. Talk to me,” Dorian hissed. “Let me hear how _mystified_ you are by my anger.”

“Dorian,” Halward chided. “There’s no need to-“

“I prefer the company of men. As in sex. My father disapproves.”

Aran stood very still, looking as though the wrong movement might well set the whole tavern on fire. The way Dorian was feeling, he wasn’t far off. “... _that’s_ what this is about?” he asked, sounding… strained? Gobsmacked? “Who you sleep with?”

Was that a touch of laughter? “Did I stutter?” Dorian snapped.

“No! No, I just…that’s a big problem in Tevinter, then?” Aran took one cautious step closer, tipping his head to meet Dorian’s furious gaze. Brave little monster-killer.

“Only if you’re trying to live up to an impossible standard. Every Tevinter family is intermarrying to distill the perfect mage: perfect body, perfect mind. The perfect leader. It means every perceived flaw - every aberration - is deviant and shameful. It must be hidden.” He stiffened at the touch to his shoulder, meeting that curious, kind study. Not laughter, then. Not amusement or judgment.

“I didn’t realize.” There went those gears again, churning, churning. Fools. They’d been fools to tell him he was anything but extraordinary. Fools to think it. Perhaps his nose was out of alignment and his complexion was an improbable confoundment of freckles, but those things only made him more… himself. Uniquely, expressively lovely. His mind a bright flame. “It’s different in the Marches. Not… entirely different, but not so… _Deviant_? Really?”

“I’ll admit, I had wondered if this wasn’t simply your own personal, charming lack of subtlety.”

Aran snorted quietly, “Plenty of that, too, I’m sure.”

“So that’s what this is about,” Halward’s lip curled, the words oozing from him with unconcealed disgust. “I should have known.”

“No,” Dorian snapped, wheeling on the man he’d once held in such esteem. “You don’t get to make those assumptions. He is not why you’re here.”

“This is not what I wanted,” the Magister sighed.

“I've never been what you wanted, Father," Dorian replied bitterly. "Or have you forgotten?"

"Dorian-" Halward began, and Dorian could hear the disdain coiling in preparation of a strike.

"I've heard enough.” He looked back to see Aran studiously attempting to look intimidating: arms crossed, brows lowered. Failing adorably. “Let's just go."

"Dorian, please, if you'll only listen to me," Halward took a step forward, lifting his hand.

 Dorian snarled, crossing the distance between them to slap Halward’s hands down. No blade. No staff. No focus. No threat. None but to his own peace of mind. "Why? So you can spout more convenient lies?" His hands clenched into fists at his sides, shaking. "You taught me to hate blood magic. 'The resort of a weak mind.' Those are your words." He sneered down his nose at his father, "But what was the first thing you did when your precious heir refused to play pretend for the rest of his life?” His voice broke on the last word, his fury cracking to show the pain beneath the mask. “You tried to change me!"

"I only wanted what was best for you!" Halward spoke calmly, precisely.

“No!” Dorian drew his rage around him like a shield, "You wanted what was best for you! For your fucking legacy! Anything for that!"

 “I-“

“Enough,” Dorian turned from him again, satisfied that they were not about to be blood magic’d to death or servitude, and met Aran’s eyes. “Yes?”

Aran pushed from the wall, holding out his hand, “Just. Come here. For a moment. Okay?”

Dorian took the offered hand, shamed by the fact that he did so as much for comfort and contact as he did to spite his father.

Across the room, at the empty bar, Aran leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder, the way he did when they were planning an ambush. Hushed. Close. Gears turning behind his eyes. “If it’s what you want, we can go,” he murmured quietly, “I only want to make sure… is this truly where you want to leave things? If you go now, you might never get another chance.”

Dorian swallowed, hard, staring at the bar. His breathing slowly evened out, his shoulders rolling back. “If I murder him…”

“If that happens, I’ll help you bury the body. But… try not to, yeah? International political incidents always get Josie’s smallclothes in a twist.”

He would have laughed if he could have. The humor warmed him, grounded him, brought him back to here. Now. He was his own man here, out of his father’s shadow. He was making a real, active difference. He had people who cared for him - as he was - and damn the rest. “Tell me why you came," Dorian said, turning back to Halward, resting his elbows on the bar, his expression a mask of patient derision.

"If I had known I would drive you to the Inquisition..." Halward shook his head sorrowfully.

"You didn't," Dorian lifted his chin. He sounded tired, even to himself. "I joined the Inquisition because it's the right thing to do. Once I had a father who would have known that."

"Once I had a son who trusted me," Halward answered. "I only wanted to talk to him. To hear his voice again." He hesitated, "To ask him to forgive me."

Dorian’s jaw tightened, focusing his dampening gaze on the floor. "I would speak to him alone," he said in a soft, uncertain undertone. "Wait here?"

“Right here.” Aran hitched himself onto a stool for good measure and rested a hand on Dorian’s shoulder for just a moment.

“Thank you.”

Dorian walked past his father up the stairs, leaving Halward to stand there for a moment before following. Empty rooms, empty hall. “What did you do?”

“I paid the innkeeper a ridiculous sum for a modicum of privacy.”

“Then you haven’t strayed too far from the path you claimed to keep to. I’d wondered-” He waited, nudging a plain clay vase with his fingertip. Dried petals scattered around his hand. “You said you wanted to apologize.”

“What I did- what I tried to do- I did for you.”

“No. That’s not it,” Dorian whisked past him.

“I was wrong,” Halward added quickly. “I know that now. I knew it then. Foolish, irresponsible. I feared what would become of you and fear is a weakness, it creates further weakness where it stirs. I accept that. I needed you to hear me say it.”

Damn the tricky bastard. He hesitated at the top of the stairs. “And?”

“I am sorry. Sorry that I chose the weaker path. Sorry that I gave up on trying to reason with you. Sorry that I drove you away. I never wanted this.”

“I know what you wanted.”

“Yet you do not see the why of it.”

“I see it clearer than you think.”

“Dorian. If you were anyone else, any Altus in any other family, I-“ Dorian speared him with a dark look. “I would not have liked it any better, no, but it would have been different. You have greatness in you. Power and intellect. You could be the Archon, still, if only you’d listen to reason and accept the guidance of those who wish you success. Is your petty flirtation with this… this… southern upstart so much more important than the destiny of your homeland?”

“I came here to aid the Inquisition. The petty flirtation with the upstart is a mere side benefit.”

“It is no concern of ours if these southern nations tear themselves asunder. We have greater tasks: choices that will shape the whole of the Imperium, the whole of Thedas. It is your pride that blinds you; I know it well. I have struggled with it for the whole of my life. It has led me to some terrible places. I do not want that for you. Dorian, look at me, do you think you are the only one who has ever been asked to give up a part of himself for his country?”

“No. I don’t think that.” He met his father’s eyes, “but I see in you the kind of person one becomes when they do. And I do not wish that for myself.”

“The changes we dream of for Tevinter, they are possible if you join the _consiliare_. If you take the position you have been raised for, so many things are possible.”

“They are. And I have not given up that dream.” Dorian shook his head. “But not your way.” He returned to the stairs, “Never your way. Go home, Father. My place is here, for now.” He found Aran exactly where he’d left him, waiting, absently balancing a knife on the back of his wrist, “We can go now.”

Aran hopped up, sheathing the blade. He started to speak, then seemed to think better of it.

Outside, the night was brisk. For once, Dorian wished for rain, for the mask it might have given him. Aran’s fingers twined with his there, in the middle of the town square, tugging him towards the docks.

“The horses…”

“Will wait. Someone came in while I was waiting. Said there’s a little pub down by the water. I want to see before we leave.”


	4. Chapter 4

Aran drew him into the crowded interior of his so-called ‘pub’. A shack, filled with a mass of people, laughter, the clink of glasses on barrel tops. They miraculously found a pair of wobbly stools in a corner and Aran abandoned him to foray for libation, returning with a dusty bottle mottled with old wax and a pair of cracked teacups.

“Charming little place you’ve found.”

“Where there’s a will, people always find a way.”

Too dratted optimistic. Too charming by half. Dorian poured the contents of the bottle into the cups and lifted his own. “To sheer stubbornness.”

“To shit drinks with better people,” Aran returned, grinning.

They drank and Dorian winced, “I think it may be medicinal. Is that… a hint of seaweed?”

“Lake weed, maybe?” Aran made a face. “It has to get better over time.” He poured for them both. “Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to.”

“He says we’re alike. Too much pride. Once I would have been overjoyed to hear him say that. Now I’m not certain. I don’t know if I can forgive him.”

“Are you all right?”

“No, not really.” The second cup was not better. It may have been worse. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Aran had an eye to the mouth of the bottle, trying to peer down into it. Ridiculous. “Thank you for bringing me out here. It wasn’t what I expected, but… it’s something.” He folded his legs to his chest to allow a pair of heavily armed women to jostle past in the tight confines. The noise, the chatter, flowed around him, cloaking them as surely as any shadowed corner booth in Orlais. Privacy in the storm. “He’s a good man, my father,” he said, running his finger around the cracked rim of his cup. “Deep down. Very deep, these days. He taught me principle is important. He cares for me in his way, but he won’t ever change.”

Aran hesitated and Dorian watched him think, think, think before: “...You said he tried to change you?”

“Out of desperation. I wouldn’t put on a show, marry the girl, keep everything unsavory private and locked away. Selfish, I suppose, not to want to spend my entire life screaming on the inside.” He cleared his throat, covering his mouth with a tight fist. “I should just tell you. Get it all out in the open. He was going to do a blood ritual. Alter my mind. Make me… acceptable. I found out. I left.”

Aran looked more flummoxed than he’d ever seen him. Bless him. Dorian would have taken a bet that he was trying to sort through everything he knew about magic to put that into some sense of order in his tidy mind. “Can blood magic actually do that?”

And ten silver to me, he thought glibly. “Maybe. It could also have left me a drooling vegetable. It crushed me to think he’d found that absurd risk preferable to the scandal. Part of me has always hoped he didn’t really want to go through with it. If he had, I can’t even imagine the person I would be now. I wouldn’t like that Dorian.”

Aran nodded seriously. In the corner, a woman was standing on a barrel singing the Chant of Light to a bawdy sailor’s tune. A dwarf was cursing about humans and their damned ill-placed elbows. Aran hummed, biting his lip, “...what sort of vegetable? A cucumber? Zucchini?”

Always surprising him. “Would it make a difference?” Dorian shook his head on a laugh. “Maker knows what you must think of me now, after that display.”

“I don’t think less of you.” Sober blue eyes. Not sapphire or the color of midnight skies. Just a soft, plain, common blue. Intoxicating despite themselves. “More, if possible.”

“The things you say.”

Aran’s hand rested beside his on the dirty barrel, fingers barely touching. “I mean it.”

“My father never understood. Living a lie… It festers inside of you, like poison.” He searched that ordinary, extraordinary pair of eyes, “You have to fight for what’s in your heart.”

“I agree.” Aran hesitated for a moment, weighing, calculating. But instead of speaking, the blonde just leaned across the table and kissed him.

Dorian leaned into that touch of lips, simple and firm, brushing his tongue against Aran’s lower lip. The other man opened for him, that eager, talented tongue sliding along his own to curl and taste and claim. They came apart smiling into one another’s faces. “I see you enjoy playing with fire, Inquisitor.”

Aran laughed. “It seems so.”

“At any rate, it feels like the time to drink myself into a stupor. It’s been that sort of day. Shall we?” He frowned at the bottle between them, “Was this the only option in this fine establishment?”

“They had something in a barrel they were calling ‘Ram’s Piss’.”

“And this one was…”

“Lady’s Delight.”

Dorian’s laughter shook him down to his toes.

“I thought you’d like that.” He sounded so terribly pleased with himself. “To delighting the ladies?” he asked, pouring for them again.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Sometimes,” he agreed warmly.

“Have you?” Dorian asked, gathering the courage to drink the swill again.

“Have I what?” Aran glanced up, flushed at the look he must have seen on Dorian’s face. “Oh. I don’t think so.”

“Really?”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised.” Aran tilted his head to the side, “Wait, is that a compliment to my various talents?”

“I think you’re well aware of your various talents.”

Aran’s lips curled into a deviously pleased grin. “I think I may have managed not to completely disappoint one or two, but delight? I don’t know. I suppose I didn’t really… pay much mind in the moment. My thoughts were elsewhere. If you catch my meaning.” He tugged at his earlobe, his gaze grazing Dorian’s fingertips on its way back to his eyes. “Why? Have you?” Dorian lifted a brow. “Maker, you have. Of course, you have. You could do it just by posing, I suppose.” Dorian turned Aran’s palm over in his, kissing the callouses one by one, drawing little breaths out of the man. “Is this… a demonstration or a distraction?”

“Which would you prefer?” He whispered, his voice a low, reverberating purr against the pulse leaping in Aran’s wrist.

“Ah… oh.” Aran swallowed hard, shifting his weight on his stool. Dorian nipped at his pulse and sat back, satisfied. Doubly so at the frown of disappointment that tugged between those pale brows. “You’re a scoundrel,” he said, the tremble in his voice belying the words.

“So they tell me. Cheers.” He drank, waited for Aran, then poured again. “What is it like? In Ostwick?”

“Do you know Kirkwall? Starkhaven?”

“I passed through.”

“Less strict and Templar-y than Kirkwall. More fish than Starkhaven.”

“Fish?” Dorian asked, pouring again. “Is this more barbarian slang?”

“No. Ostwick is a coastal region. Mostly bread, fish, corn, and ale. Oh, and crab. I sometimes dream about crab stew. I haven’t found anything like it down here. It’s creamed with milk and butter and thyme… Dip a bit of cornbread in there and let it fall apart and then-“

Dorian covered his smile with ringed fingers.

“What?”

“You’re hungry.”

Aran squinted at him.

“You’re rhapsodizing about a soup.”

“It’s not a soup. It’s a stew. Big chunks of fresh crab that melt on your tongue. They tried to make it in Starkhaven, but the travel time takes something from the meat. Now, Starkhaven, they have a fish and egg pie that’s near as good. If we get up so far, you should try it. Feckin’ good scran.”

“Feck what?”

“It’s… scran’s a… you know, a whole meal that fills you up, not just your belly, your heart.”

Dorian’s smile catapulted sideways.

“What?”

“You’re adorable.”

“I’m not!” Aran laughed, “It’s just a word. A common word at-“ he left off, looking at his cup, pouring again. “I was going to say home, but it’s not really anymore, is it?”

“Do you think you’ll go back?”

“If we survive, it’s likely I’ll pass through. But go back, truly? I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine going back to copying treatises on moss uses after all this.” He lifted his cup, “ _Slainte_.”

“ _Gaudia_ ,” Dorian answered, tipping back. “Food aside,” he spoke to quell his nausea from the fourth cup. Fifth? No, fourth. “I had been asking about… what you mentioned before.”

“Sex?”

Dorian pressed his face into his palm. “There’s that cunning they all revere you for.”

Aran shrugged. “It’s… well, no one in my family’s ever married for love, that I know of. Actually, if you’re in a match for alliance and heirs and your piece on the side is- you know- not like to get pregnant or get you pregnant, it’s better. They don’t like mucking with bastards in the family tree, that’s for sure. That’s if it matters: your heirs. Most, it doesn’t. Farmers pray for children to help with the land. Merchants pray opposite, so there aren't so many mouths to keep fed. The real trouble is between the city-states. You make an alliance with a family from Starkhaven, for instance, that’s one thing. That’s securing the stronghold. But if you’re just making eyes with no reason and they bear a different star? Fuck, you’re in trouble.”

“Truly?”

“Fair dangerous for anyone if you don’t have a really good excuse. We don’t have a King, you see. Every city-state and its region is its own. We have so much intrigue in the Marches that poor Orlais would cross her eyes.”

“Never would I have guessed that. You seem so…”

“Provincial?”

Dorian shook his head.

“Barbaric? Backward? Mad? Violent?” Aran grinned, “We are all of those things. The whole sauce is fucked. But it works, most of the time. The powerful stay in power as long as they keep the people fed, clothed, safe, and free. Better than kings and empresses. There’s so much distance between them and those they serve, and it is a service. People forget that easily if there’s no way they can lose what they have.”

“I’m beginning to see why you and Cassandra get along so well.”

“And you.” Aran tapped the back of Dorian’s hand absently, brushing back and forth along the knuckles. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re just as political as we are. ‘Harles’ Collection on the Diversification of Wealth’?” He shook his head, “I thought for sure that was what had-“

“What?” Dorian asked as Aran fell silent.

“I just… I thought that might be why you and your family were estranged. Not… it didn’t occur to me that it’d be about this.”

“Interestingly, my father’s not terribly interested in my opinions on politics, so long as I’m in a position to enforce them.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You should and have. I find it refreshing to have so many people actually speaking their minds.”

Aran grinned. “Then you’re in the right place.”

Dorian turned his hand to cradle Aran’s hand in his own. “It would seem so.” He dabbed his tongue to his lower lip, eyeing their joined hands. “When you-” He frowned, then frowned deeper as Aran’s brows lifted curiously.

“What?”

His pulse beat uncomfortably. “Nothing. It’s not-”

“Andraste’s tits, just ask me. I’ll tell you whatever it is. I’ll tell you anything.”

Dorian looked at him speculatively. “Anything?”

“Sure - why not?” He poured for them both, tossed his cup back, poured again. “Fire at will.”

“About the ladies’ delight. You said your thoughts were elsewhere.”

“What was your pretty turn of phrase? I prefer the company of men.” Aran looked at him quizzically, “It can’t be that great a shock to you. I’ve been doing my very best demonstration.”

Dorian laughed, “No, not- Yes, you’ve done a fine demonstration. I meant: why? If you had no need for heirs and no pressure to- Why would you-”

“Try?” The blonde rubbed his knuckles over his stubbled cheek, “I was a young idiot, living in cloisters, surrounded by other young idiots - none of whom shared my personal leanings. It took me a while to realize there were options. And part of that realization was picturing Thom Flannery’s arms whilst applying my youthful vigor to a lay sister.” He sighed, warm gaze brushing the skin of Dorian’s bare shoulder, “I have weaknesses.”

The mage caught his tongue between his teeth. “Thank the Maker for that.” He scooped up the bottle and tugged Aran to his feet.

“Where are we going?”

“Private.”

Aran smiled, lopsided.

Dorian felt the room spin but managed not to stumble as Aran was wedged against him in the crowd. He felt those clever fingers brush his side, his back. He laughed, backing up through the crowd. “Private,” he repeated as Aran drew him down.

“Is that what you want?” he asked, a hair’s breadth from Dorian’s lips, intent, none too sober. “Or is that what you think I want?”

“It’s sensible-”

“I’m not ashamed of you. I don’t need to hide you.”

Dorian cupped his cheeks and held him in place. “Don’t-”

“There’s only one person whose opinion of me matters-”

“Tempting chit-”

“You.”

Dorian watched his lips form the word. “...Me?”

Aran nipped at his lower lip. “Yes.”

“Aran-”

“Yes?”

Dorian brushed his fingers over the man’s rough, liquor-warmed cheeks. “ _Festis bei umo canavarum_.” [1]

 _“Nis quo dabis mihi vita_.” [2]

Dorian drank him in: blue eyes shining, freckled cheeks flushed with awful liquor and more primal sources, lips parted on the last notes of a foreign tongue scorched by his liquid Ostwick accent. Not a note of the man could be mistaken for anything but wanting, unapologetically, despite the mass of strangers crowding them on every side. Strangers. Perhaps, surrounded by drunks who would be unlikely to remember their own names, let alone his and Aran’s faces. Perhaps. He pressed his lips to Aran’s, controlled and careful, and breathed in the other man’s moan against his darting tongue. Then Aran’s arms wrapped around him, pulling them flush. He felt every inch of the other man’s desire pressed to his hip. And he stopped caring about the strangers and their memories. He stopped hearing his father’s disgust in his head.

With this man. In this moment. Nothing else mattered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tevene translations:  
> [1] You will be the death of me.  
> [2] Only because you give me life.


	5. Chapter 5

Dorian pulled Aran with him, back through the crowd into the silken night air, as the Herald of Andraste attempted to explore every inch of his tongue with his own. The docks were awash with laughter and small bonfires, swirls of benevolent magic within the crowds lighting the night, couples in every shadowy place. He thought for a moment that Aran was right - people did find a way. Not even Halward could take a good night’s celebration from Redcliffe - a celebration that they’d lived yet another day. That they were free. 

Aran skimmed his teeth along his jaw, “Hey.” 

Dorian caught the man’s chin. The fires and mage light bloomed in his soft blue eyes like reflections of the stars in a pond, pupils dilated with lust and drink. He traced the wild pattern of freckles across Aran’s brow and cheeks, feeling the man sway in his hold, breath unsteady. “I think,” he grinned, “that you’re excellent for a lash.”

The surprised laugh brightened every aspect of his guileless expression, “Sure, in the dark.” He turned his face into Dorian’s palm, kissing the warm flesh there, whining a little as Dorian reoriented him into the light. “Dorian. Gods, man-”

The roughened tenor burrowed into him, driving any gentle plans he’d been sloshing around in his head far, far away and replacing them with a singular need to find an unoccupied corner somewhere in this town and take this creature. He laughed as the bottle was swiped from his hand, Aran ducking under his arm and waving it as though the drink - and not the slightly swaying body in possession of it - was the lure. 

Aran backed down the dock, grinning sideways, and sidestepped a set of nets drying on poles. 

“The Void are you going?” Dorian wondered, following. Past barrels and nets, to the end of the dock. Aran sank to the boards, swigging from the bottle, and rapping it down beside him. He tugged off his boots and darned socks, dragging his vest and shirt off as one. “Aran-” Dorian hissed, laughing. “This isn’t-”

“Private?” The idiot was grinning, stumbling up all elbows and lean muscle. He yanked the laces of his breeches and shoved them down with his braies, kicking free. “Sure- until dawn anyway.” Dorian wet his lips, drinking in the sight of him against the open lake, the circle tower in the distance. Aran spread his arms, beaming, and threw himself into the lake. Dorian darted forward as the idiot emerged from the water, shaking his head on a muffled ‘whoop’, “Come in.”

“You come out,” Dorian shook his head, lifting the abandoned bottle. 

“Ah,” the Herald of Andraste rubbed water from his eyes, treading water in the Calenhad, grinning as though it were Winterfest, “Too late for that, I’m afraid.” Dorian laughed as he dipped under the water again and floated up, bare as the day, all pale flesh and blonde hair matted and curled at his chest, freckle-spotted and loose. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure that you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“Are your eyes sore? Fresh water’s good for that, I hear,” he returned to the dock on his back, catching the boards with his fingers, blinking water from his eyes. 

“You’ll freeze to death.” Dorian shook his head, passing the bottle down when Aran wiggled his fingers for it. 

“It’s not cold. Take off your boots at least. Take a dangle.” Aran took a swig from the bottle and passed it back.

“I’m not going to let you pull me in.”

The blonde twisted in the water, perching his elbows on the dock with a sniff. “You already have,” he held a hand up, “I solemnly swear I will not drag you bodily into this glorious lake. So take your boots off and come down here where I can reach you.”

Dorian eyed him with skepticism, but he took his boots off. “I don’t have another robe.”

“See, I meant what I said, but now you’re tempting me with visions of your bare arse from here to Skyhold.”

Dorian snorted, carefully taking a seat at the end of the dock and wincing as his bare toes dipped into the water. “Not cold, he says.”

“It’s not cold. It’s fucking freezing.” Aran laughed, bobbing into the water and back up again with a shiver, brushing his hands over Dorian’s feet and calves. 

“You’re a lunatic.”

“No moon tonight.”  
Dorian hissed as those freezing fingers brushed up his legs, leaving chilled trails behind them as they circled his knee. “Do not.”

Aran peered up at him, all bright and flushed and nudged the hem of his robes further up his thigh. “Don’t what?” He skimmed his lips against the inside of Dorian’s thigh, pushing the cloth further and further. His lips were like ice, melting against his skin. “Don’t touch you? Don’t kiss you?” He exhaled heat against the trail of chill kisses. “Don’t taste you?”

Dorian shuddered, bracing himself as Aran rearranged his robes, distributing frozen droplets as he moved, licking them back up with a slick, cool tongue. He was hard as stone by the time Aran had freed him of his loincloth and wrapped his mouth around his straining cock, caught between the heat of Aran’s mouth and the startling, erratic chills of the water dripping from the man’s hair onto his hips, his balls- He sank his fingers into cold blonde hair, pushing it back from Aran’s face, watching the other man envelop him. “Ah, Maker- Aran-” 

Aran exhaled a long stream of hot breath down his shaft, tracing the length of him with his tongue, darting tasting licks to his tight balls each time he managed to get the whole of Dorian’s cock into his mouth, head pressing against the back of his throat. Dorian gasped, gaped, groaned. He was some kind of perfect sea monster, half in water, swallowing him whole, freezing and boiling him at the same time. The noises- Void and Deep, the noises alone might have been enough to make him come- hushed, pitiful whines mixed with guttural moans that vibrated through to his core. He could feel himself cresting, soaring… and cursed when Aran pushed back and dropped under the surface again. 

Shaking breaths, fingers gripping damp, dirty boards, Dorian watched the water’s surface. Seconds ticked by. Then the scoundrel re-emerged, gasping, a couple of feet away. 

“I’m sorry,” he licked his lips, grinning, swimming back. “I am going to get you wet.”

Dorian collapsed back against the dock, seeing stars, and prepared to be pulled into the abyss. Instead, the frozen creature surged onto the dock between his knees, clambering over him, bringing half the contents of the lake with him like a freezing tidal wave. “Andraste’s tits, you infernal-” He choked on the last word as Aran stroked the base of his cock, angling him to his puckered hole. “Too cold, you monster,” he gasped, groaning as the head of his cock squeezed into hot, tight bliss. “Kaffas-” He bucked, pressing in a little more, “How in the Void-”

Aran’s head fell back, eyes squeezed shut, gnashing his teeth, rotating his hips as he ground his way down onto Dorian’s cock with a single-minded purpose. Deep breaths expanded his ribs, blew steam from his nostrils. “Cold, cold, cold-”

Dorian grasped his hips and thrust, burying himself in that tight channel. Aran carefully drew up and Dorian dragged his ass back again. Soaked, he was soaked and freezing and stank of some kind of algae, but inside of Aran he was gripped by pure heat. He focused on that, on the shivering man straddling him and riding him more and more mindlessly with every thrust. Aran ran his hands over his dripping torso, up into his hair, practically clawing at himself as he impaled himself again and again in some kind of frozen rapture. Dorian groaned, catching a flame in his palm and closing his fingers around it to warm them, feeling too damned godlike when he closed that same warm fist around Aran’s cock and felt the man tighten around and against him. 

“Yes- ah, fuck, Dorian-” Aran shook his head, sending water flying, falling forward to grip the boards on either side of Dorian’s shoulders. “Fucking stone me, Maker, I love your cock so bloody much-” He groaned, rocking between Dorian’s hand and cock with eager abandon.

Dorian pressed his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth, panting, driving into that tight, tighter hole as Aran’s muscles leaped and flexed around him in the precursor to a dive. “Take it,” he gasped, “take it-” 

Aran groaned through gritted teeth, a cord of sticky heat bursting across Dorian's abdomen. Dorian smiled, dark and fierce, and rolled Aran to his back. He grasped one chill, pale, freckled thigh against his palm and lifted, thrusting the man against the dock. The ancient boards creaked beneath them as Aran writhed, moaning, taking every inch that Dorian had to give. “Yes- yes-” Dorian’s breath hitched, grunting like a barbarian against Aran’s shoulder, until he poured himself deep inside the other man, shuddered, and collapsed. 

When next he opened his eyes, he found himself wincing into the sun. Dorian covered his eyes, turning his face from the glare into his warm, firm pillow. His pillow grunted in pain. “Terribly sorry.” Why was he apologizing to a pillow? Why did his pillow smell like a beached bottle of swill? He tilted his head, resting his chin on it and opening his eyes to see Aran’s freckled features tinged a bit sickly in the morning light. Morning. Damn and blast.

“Shite, my bloody, fucking head-” the leader of the Inquisition swore, pressing his palm to his forehead. 

Dorian squinted blearily, covering Aran’s mouth with his hand. Beyond the pile of netting, he could see figures on the docks, going about their business. Maybe no one had noticed them. He could get Aran dressed… pieces of the night before began to stitch back together in his mind. Get Aran dressed, get back to the horses, find a shack and pass out for the rest of the day. He started to leverage himself up, pressed his lips together hard, and froze. Second plan. Throw up first, preferably not on Aran.

“Top of the morning!” a too loud, too cheerful voice called. A woman on a small boat waved as she rowed past the end of the dock. 

Aran - idiot that he was - waved in the voice’s direction. “And t’you,” he rasped, still wincing. 

“Took a bit of a mad header into the deep, eh?” 

Someday, after he had thrown up and slept for a week, he was going to start the task of translating all the ridiculous things southerners said. Aran had progressed from wincing to squinting in the direction of the boat. “The- what?”

“You’re whitied,” she laughed. “I thought you were supposed to be all fancified now. But here you are, sure as a reeker, basking in your bornagains.” 

“Taff?” Aran grunted. 

“Who’s the fetch?” 

Dorian swallowed. Hard. Carefully lowered himself back down to press his face against the dock. 

Aran seemed to take to his returning weight about the same as Dorian had taken to attempting to stand. He took on a pale green tinge. “What.” 

“His name’s ‘What’? That’s mad.”

“-are you doing here?”

“Came down after the Conclave,” the woman chattered away, rowing closer. “Load of folk needin’ help and what were we t’do? Stand idle?” She smiled warmly, resting an elbow on the dock, “Saw you this morning when the lads took the first trawls out and thought you might have a tight head.” She flicked a gaze over Dorian like a hostler checking a new stallion, “You’re askew,” she smiled, tapping her lip. “Here.” She held out a small clear bottle, the contents dense and honey-colored. “Hair of the dog and a bit for the color.” 

“You know this person?” Dorian asked, rounding far more irritated than he meant to. 

“Tafferis and I transferred from Ostwick to Starkhaven together,” he whispered, more for his own comfort than for any attempt at secrecy. He took the offered bottle and swallowed half of it, pressing it to Dorian’s lips. Dorian drank. The liquid seared his throat and opened his sinuses; it felt as though air rushed directly into his eyes and the bile that had been creeping up his throat was thrust back into his stomach all at once. 

“When I heard they’d given you fancy titles and such, I thought for sure I’d never find you passed out in your altogether again. Nice to know some things don’t change.” She grinned. 

“What was that?” Dorian asked, peering at the bottle. 

“I’m a healer. I heal. No one knows how to cure a hangover better than a Marcher.” She patted him on the shoulder, “You seem less likely to toss up, What. That’s better. Now hop aboard and I’ll take you back on the raft. The dock’s all fish guts this time of day. Who’s for breakfast?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This chapter has been updated. Chapter 5 steaminess added before this. Enjoy.

Aran pushed through the pile of scrolls and notes. It had only been a matter of days since they'd arrived back to Skyhold, but it felt like... moments. Or years. Both at the same time. Somehow, he felt... settled. Stronger. Maybe that was because every time someone mentioned Lake Calenhad, Dorian got a strangely reminiscing look and talked about magic creatures in the loch's depths. Maybe because he didn't pull away when he touched him anymore, not looking over his shoulder, checking for prying eyes. Home. Whether Dorian wanted to hear it yet or not, Aran knew he'd found it. Wherever Dorian was, that would be it. He wanted to shout it, scrawl it on the walls, tie notes to every raven in the tower, but he would wait. He'd wait because Dorian had been through a wringer, a massive one, and he wasn't going to put the man in the position of having to defend himself again. Not for love. Not for him. When he was ready, then he'd do his victory lap, send his letters... Void and Deep, he'd let Josephine throw the ball she'd been hankering for and give it a reason. Some thoroughly political excuse for what was so deeply entrenched in his heart. 

“There were so many questions surrounding Farrier’s death,” Leliana sighed. “Did Butler think we wouldn’t notice? He’s killed one of my best agents. And he knows where the others are. You know what must be done. Make it clean. Painless, if you can. We were friends once.”

Her words jarred him from his thoughts. “Wait. What are you doing?” Aran looked up from the papers she’d given him to look through, glancing between her and the hooded agent.

“He betrayed us. He murdered my agent.”

“And that means you’d kill him? Just like that?”

She frowned. “You find fault with my decision?”

“Not usually, Leliana. You know that. But this is extreme.”

“Extreme,” she repeated dully, “to kill a traitor.”

“He’s one of ours. One of yours. Don’t you at least want to know why he betrayed us?” Aran leaned forward, “You’re the one who’s always telling me we have to make use of every resource. If he has information, even the name of whoever he’s gone to work for, then he’s a resource. Use him.”

“He’s a loose end that could escape and get word to our enemies,” Leliana studied him, careful and assessing. “Butler’s betrayal put our agents in danger. If I condemn one man, I can save dozens.” She noticed his wince, he knew, because she noticed everything. But she didn’t call attention to it. A fact for which he was grateful. “I may not like what I do, but it must be done. I cannot afford the luxury of ideals at a time like this.”

“Now is precisely the time for ideals.” Couldn’t she see that? “What is the Inquisition, but a bunch of idealists, trying to sort all this out together?”

“You feel very strongly about this.”

“I do.” She was hesitating, reconsidering. “It is your choice in the end.”

There it was. That surety of decision. “It is.” She turned back to her agent, “Apprehend Butler, but see that he lives.”

“Thank you,” he said as her agent left.

“You cannot remain so soft-hearted, my lord Trevelyan. Betrayal is natural in halls of power and ours is one of those now. More powerful every day. If we are not careful, it will catch us unawares.”

“Then we’ll be careful. Not callous.”

“As you say, Inquisitor.” She looked away, thoughtful. “Now if you’re happy, I have more work to do.”

“Do you need some time, Leliana?” he asked quietly. “A few days, perhaps? To breathe.”

“I may. We shall see.” He watched her go, leaning on the banister, as she slipped out the door to the ramparts. Walking to clear her head, probably. He’d seen her up there before.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but-“ Mother Giselle’s voice carried up through the center of the tower, close and irritated.

“I’m being clucked at by a hen, evidently.” Dorian. What in the Void?

“Don’t play the fool with me, young man-“ Was he going to spend the day calming normally sane and thoughtful women? Was there something in the water? He crossed to the stairs, still hearing their voices echoing to him.

“If I wanted to play the fool, I could be rather more convincing, I assure you.”

“Your glib tongue does you no credit.”

“You’d be surprised at the credit my tongue gets me, your Reverence.”

“You two seem to be getting along just fine,” Aran lifted his brows as he stepped between them. “Just what I like to see. Would anyone like to tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh, I…”

“It seems the Revered Mother is concerned about my ‘undue influence’ over you.”

“It is just concern.” Giselle shifted her gaze to him, resting her fingers over her heart, with all the warm awareness she always had when she spoke with him. “Your Worship, you must know how this looks.”

“No, your Reverence,” Aran disagreed carefully. “Not if it causes you concern. I don’t.”

Dorian chuckled, sounding anything but amused. “You might need to spell it out, my dear.”

“This man is of Tevinter. His presence at your side. The rumors alone…”

“Why is this a problem all of a sudden? So far as I know, he’s always been from Tevinter.”

A few months ago, the scathing look she gave him would have chided him, but now it rolled over him like a fog. Especially after that fiasco with Dorian’s father… he was beginning to question her judgment when it came to his mage. As much, at least, as she questioned his on the same subject.

“I’m fully aware that not everyone from the Imperium is the same.”

“How kind of you to notice,” Dorian murmured. “Yet still you bow to the opinion of the masses?”

“The opinion of the masses is based on centuries of evidence. What would you have me tell them?”

“The truth?”

“The truth is that I do not know you. And neither do they. Thus these rumors will continue.”

“What are they exactly?” Aran asked, watching her dark cheeks stain with distress.

“Pardon?” she asked, hushed.

“The rumors,” he clarified. “I’d like to hear them.”

“I… could not repeat them, your Worship.”

“So you've shared them before.” He didn’t mean to frown at her, didn’t want to make her feel small, but he could see that was exactly what he was doing. It was wrong to take it out on her, simply because her own fears were making her do foolish things. But, Maker, he was angry, “To someone other than myself. Yes?”

She looked away.

“The concerns of the Chantry are not the concerns of the Inquisition, Mother Giselle,” Aran frowned, “and vice versa. They’ve made that very clear.”

“I am aware of that. And aware of the steps you have taken to solve those differences.”

“I had thought we were both taking those steps, your Reverence,” he said, searching her face. “I had thought we both understood what it would take to change things for the better. Was I wrong?”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes, which was not a good sign. “I… see. I meant no disrespect, Inquisitor, only to ask after this man’s intentions. If you feel he is without ulterior motive, then I humbly beg forgiveness of you both.”

“I do.” He rested a hand lightly on her arm, “Your Reverence, if your concern is truly based in not knowing him, I would ask you take the advice you gave me with regards to the Chantry: make an effort to find common ground. Then you can take your new knowledge to those who share your concerns.”

The Reverend Mother bowed her head, uncomfortably, and retreated softly.

“Is anyone in here still reading?” he asked, looking around while heads ducked back to books and scrolls. “Maker, it’s brush fires everywhere today.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair, turning to find Dorian eyeing him. “What?”

“Well, that’s something.”

“She didn’t get to you, did she?”

“It takes more to get to me than thinly veiled accusations.”

“You don’t think she’ll do anything?”

“Do what? Yours is the good opinion I care about. Not hers.” Nevertheless, a frown remained between his perfect brows. “There are rumors, you know.”

“About you?”

Dorian tilted his head, “Yes. And us.”

“Well, as long as they’re not spreading lies,” Aran rocked back on his heels a little, smiling.

“I think there’s rather more to it than that.”

“Blood magic? Soul stealing? They really don’t know you at all, do they?”

“I _am_ a sinister Magister.”

“You’re an Altus. He’s an Altus,” Aran lifted his voice for the library to hear. “Maybe we should make an announcement? Would that be a good idea?”

“I don’t know, would it?”

“Do you always answer a question with a question?”

There was the smile, the warmth that filled him to his toes. “Would you like me to answer in some other fashion?”

Promises, promises, Aran thought, taking a step from friendly to personal space, his fingers resting on Dorian’s bare shoulder. “If you’re capable.”

Dorian’s arms slid around him, drawing him in, kissing him until his mind felt floaty. “‘If you’re capable’,” he murmured as Aran’s lips opened, breathing a little unsteadily. “The nonsense you speak.”

“You like my nonsense.”

“I do. I really do.” Dorian kissed him gently before drawing away again, “We don’t want people going on about how the ‘Vint is sucking out the Inquisitor’s soul.”

“Fine,” he muttered, and if it sounded surly… well. He was. Mother Giselle. What was she doing? What was keeping her from seeing this brilliant, compassionate man as he was? “I’ll let you get back to…”

“Researching metaphysical phenomenon.”

“Is that why you’re here all the time? I could have sworn you were just adorning the path to Leliana.”

“A happy accident.” His dark hazel eyes gleamed like freshly melted chocolate, “Perhaps I could deliver a report on my findings to you.”

“If you’re capable,” he repeated, slipping deftly out of range of Dorian’s laughing swipe. “I’ll see you tonight.” With a grin over his shoulder, he took the stairs, drawing a surprised noise from Solas as he flew through the study. Cassandra would have ideas about what to do about Giselle.

“Inquisitor, if you have a moment-“

And personal quests would have to wait. He nodded, turning from the practice rings in the courtyard and making his way down the shadowed stairs towards the hooded agent. “Can I help?”

“I have a message for you, sir. From the Elder One.”

“Wha-“ He looked down in surprise as a curved dagger of gleaming green crystals snapped into his side and twisted, drawing a shout from his throat as he dropped to his knees and toppled down the stairs into darkness.


End file.
